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Main difference between Maya, 3D Max and Blender?

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daniel_naranjo

daniel_naranjo
Posted: 08 November 2011 01:02 PM

Location: Medellin
Total Posts: 5
Joined: 22 August 2006 04:11 PM

I am a 3D animation professor and there is a question my students ask me all the time, so I am going to ask it here to get some feedback.
I`d like to know your opinion on what are the strengths and weakenesses that Maya and 3D Max have when comparing them to each other. Why does the big studios prefer Maya?
Also which are the main differences between these two softwares and Blender? Why does someone would prefer to spend a lot of money on Max or Maya when Blender is free?
Thank you for your answers.

Replies: 1

Maya was designed for large studio productions. It enables the user to animate complex animations. All great 3D Studios want to push the limits of their work. Maya allows you to do this by not limiting the number of ways to solve problems. Every tool talks to each other and if it doesn’t you can find a way to connect them. This is one of the most powerful and successful node based platforms I have every used. Many free lance artist use Max simple because many of the tools are automated and you can start to get good visual results with little effort. I started with Max and Autocad, I had a difficult time moving to Maya but, once I did I was able to pull of animations that landed me a Job. I now own may own company and could not have done it with out Maya. Amazing 3D Animation and special effects are a set of goals with a set of problems, Maya is a program that is designed to allow the artist to solve these problems.

Author: RROCHS

Replied: 08 November 2011 02:38 PM

mike_kennedy

mike_kennedy
Posted: 08 November 2011 02:42 PM

Location: Toronto
Total Posts: 141
Joined: 22 August 2006 01:06 PM
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Maya dominates film because it was originally a unix suite and everyone in fx was using SGI machines. Now a days it’s for different reasons, but being able to work on unix is a big reason since most fx houses use Renderman. Max doesn’t play well with either unix or Renderman so it’s use would be limited to most big fx studios.
Max is a more and more capable product now for film, although it’s built in particles and character tools could use some work to compete with Maya and Xsi in those areas. Modeling rendering and rigging are not that far off in Max in recent versions.
From a business stand point I don’t think Autodesk worries since all three products are under one roof. No sense making Maya better for Arch Viz or Max better for film when you already have products that fit the bill. I am a Max user mostly and for Arch Viz or games I generally prefer Max, it’s the better modeler and with great Vray integration it is my tool of choice for those areas I focus on.
Blender is a bit of a work in progress right now, but for free is catching up quickly to the big boys. Being open source it’s developers can’t have the sort of focus a commercial team can I guess, but it’s sporting some pretty cool features.
Cheers
Mike K

Core i7 920
Win 7 64 Bit
12 Gigs Ram
ATI 5850
Vray 1.5 SP5

Replies: 0